Alec Baldwin Hit With New Lawsuit By Hutchins Family

The parents and sister of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins called out cost-cutting measures and repeated failures to follow industry safety protocols on the set of Rust in a new lawsuit against Alec Baldwin and other members of the film’s production.

In a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Hutchins’s mother, Olga Solovey, her father, Anatolii Androsovych, and her sister, Svetlana Zemko, are claiming battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and loss of consortium in connection with the Oct. 21, 2021, shooting.

The family alleges that Baldwin’s failure to check the gun before he accidentally shot and killed Hutchins and injured the film’s director, Joel Souza, as well as the fact that live ammunition was allowed on set and that the gun was handed to the actor by the assistant director and not the armorer ultimately led to the cinematographer’s death, among other missteps.

“Mr. Baldwin chose to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun without checking it and without having the Armorer do so,” the complaint states, adding that the failures to follow industry protocols for gun safety “makes this a case where injury or death was much more than just a possibility – it was a likely result.”

Hutchins’s parents and sister, who live in Ukraine, are seeking unspecified damages for what their attorneys Gloria Allred and John Carpenter described as “irreparable” injuries and “the love that was taken” as a result of Hutchins’s death. Along with Baldwin, who is facing criminal charges in connection with the shooting, the suit names more than a dozen other defendants, including several producers, the film’s armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and assistant director David Halls. Gutierrez-Reed, like Baldwin, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter by New Mexico prosecutors, and Halls has agreed to plead guilty to negligent use of a deadly weapon.

“It is clear to us that the relationships of all of our clients have been damaged, and that they will not be able to enjoy life in the same way as they did when their precious Halyna was alive,” Allred said during a news conference. “Halyna was the light in their lives.”

In a prerecorded video statement shared with reporters, Zemko spoke in Russian and said, per an English translation provided by her attorneys, that losing her sister “was a horrible experience” and “one of the biggest losses of my life.” But what’s been “even more devastating,” she said as her mother sat by her side in tears, is to see her parents suffer and their health “sharply” decline.